THe Jacket
My reason for liking The Jacket is not due to its tangled, convoluted storyline. Not because of the film’s premise, that getting shot up with psychotropic drugs and being locked up in a corpse drawer is a good way to time travel. Of course that premise isn’t the reason I liked the film. THE REASON I LIKE THIS MOVIE is because in actuality it’s a very simple film with a simple yet powerful theme. At its core, The Jacket is a commentary on the powerlessness we feel when it comes to affecting change in other people’s lives. The problem is a lot of people let the somewhat complicated scifi aspect of the plot get in the way of that.
Here is what The Jacket is really about: A guy sees a sweet, innocent little girl stuck with an angry, bitter drunk of a mother. These are the type of strangers you see everyday. Maybe you’re at the mall or at a grocery store. You see some parent screaming at their kid for no reason. You see a jerk boyfriend being a disrespectful to his girlfriend. You catch small glimpses of the crappy situations otherwise good people have to live in. You see potential squandered because these good people are caught in bad situations. Situations they can’t control. You see these things and you wish you could do something about it. But you feel so powerless. How can you just walk up to a stranger and tell them they’re ruining their child’s life. Like it’s any of your business.
The Jacket uses the big metaphysical themes of time travel and destiny not for something as equally big as saving the world from terrorism or stopping global warming. In the end, the main character’s revelation of the ability to travel to the future is used for something as simple and yet powerful as changing one person’s life. That girl in an abusive relationship, that child who suffers from abusive parents. That one person who you knew for maybe five minutes, but yet whose pain you could see deeply and empathize with. Imagine being able to use the knowledge of their future to dramatically and positively make an impact on their present. And all of this with the only reward being the knowledge that you could do this good thing for this one person who probably shouldn’t have meant anything to you anyway. Just some little girl you saw stuck on the side of the road one day. You’ll be dead one day and no one will remember you. But there’s one person out there whose life is better because you reached out and did someting about it.
That’s where the big plot twist is: Doing something good for someone else. Something unexpected that made you a better person.
The last five minutes of the film are crucial to wrapping up the whole thing. Not necesarilly in a logical or narrative sense (you ARE left feeling like some loose ends aren’t tied), but in an emotional and thematic sense. That’s what this movie’s based on: Not logic or reality, but emotion and feel. Just watching a 23-year old woman talking on the phone. Knowing what he knew. It’s a poignant moment
Cast:
Jackie Price - Keira Knightley
Jack Starks - Adrien Brody
Dr. Lorenson - Jennifer Jason Leigh
Dr. Becker - Kris Kristofferson
Jean- Kelly Lynch
MacKenzie - Daniel Craig
